In conversation with the executive chef of Steak and Company

Can you tell us a little bit about your background as a chef? I was classically trained as a chef. I started as a pastry chef in Poland before going on to travel around the world. I was in the United States for five years and that’s when I got my passion for Floridian foods. After that, I moved to Maine and found a job on the island. It was around 2008 or 2009 that I moved back to London and started to work at Maze Grill as a sous chef. I would say this was when my passion for cooking became my second nature. I took over the group in 2018. In March of this year, we rebranded to an exciting concept, which got us to be one of the best steakhouses in London. We've got a great selection of guys where everyone is on the same page in regards to the restaurants and the meaning of the brand. We are trying to think more outside the box, developing new dishes and getting our steaks from all over the world from the best suppliers in these countries. What have the menu transformations been for 2022? The old concept was high-end dining where we served steaks on hot lava stones, but then we decided to change that X-factor to serving steaks on plates as well, as a lot of people didn't enjoy sitting in a smoky restaurant. We want to get amazing food out to our guests, but we didn’t want to remove the actual experience that goes along with it. I’d say our menu now has better quality products; we substituted a couple of ingredients and transformed the menu into something more mature to have more flavour, and I think it’s proving to be really popular. What is the group’s strategy to cope with the energy and cost-of-living crisis and what advice would you give smaller operators during this difficult time? It's very hard now after Covid-19 and Brexit; they’ve changed lots of stuff for the culinary industry. These factors have made it hard to find new employees. Food prices have also gone up, some of them almost double what it used to cost last year. On top of it all, we are going to face almost double the energy bills. When opening a restaurant, especially in London, you would have to think about where to make savings, not only how best to make money and create amazing menus. At the moment we are really reducing our opening hours, which means that we no longer serve breakfast. You can’t really save energy in restaurants, you need those fridges to be working 24/7, you also need electricity to use your grill. We look to do the best we can, but even during the summer, we need our air condition systems - there’s always something that needs to be turned on. We don’t want to be that restaurant that’s going to put the prices up, because that way our customers will also suffer. I’m thinking of our regular guests who come for the dining experience we provide. We're hoping that in a few months, or maybe next year, things will get back to normal. I am of the opinion that you can just be conscious and generally aware of the electricity prices rising. You can save on energy wherever you can, for example you don't need to have a light on in the staff room when you know nobody is in there, and the grills don’t need to be on at eight or nine 'o'clock in the morning when the first table comes at 12’o'clock anyway. With the energy prices rising, it’s important to me that we don’t increase our prices, because the customers will suffer in the long run. What is your vision for the future of the brand? Our vision is to build the best steakhouse in England. Many, many years ago the best steakhouses were run by Hawksmoore, but I’d say we’ve jumped over them; everyone wants to be like us, everyone in the industry is looking at what we do. You have to be focused on the menu, you have to change the menu quite often to offer something that no one else has. You also need to have good prices, great food, as well as great service, which is what will make you attractive to guests as a company.